The Wurdalak from Black Sabbath AKA I tre volti della paura (1963)

I've not been too fond of Bava's work in the past but that changed this year with his film, Black Sunday AKA La maschera del demonio (1960) which I quite enjoyed. So, I thought that I would move on to another one of his called Black Sabbath AKA I tre volti della paura (1963).

I received the DVD from Netflix this week without knowing what I was in for. Several other IMDbers had recommended it in the past. Unfortunately, no one said that it was dubbed over in Italian no less, so badly. The version that I watched also had Boris Karloff dubbed even as he is introducing the film as well as ending it in which I found completely ludicrous. He is found in the 2nd short story of the film within the 3 part story, called "The Wurdalak".

A family's father, who had went up into the mountainous region in Russia returns home after being gone for 5 days. The family had wondered if he had been stricken with the blood curse since he had been gone for so long. One of men that was there, due to seeking out shelter in the family's home, had told them about a dead man that he had found on his travels was beheaded with a knife in his heart. That is when we first find out about the curse of the wurdalak.

Now for over 20 years, I've had a thing about vampires but I didn't know that there was a name of one called a wurdalak until I saw the film Black Sabbath. I could explain the meaning but it would spoil this short story for you if you haven't seen it. I used to own a book called The Vampire Encyclopedia back in the early 90s but I do not remember coming across the term "wurdalak".

So I guess its still true: You do learn something new every day.